Nikola Jokic on Peyton Watson trade: ‘It’s gonna be okay’

Nikola Jokic addressed the Peyton Watson trade for the first time Thursday, offering brief but pointed remarks after Serbia’s 90-87 exhibition win over France.

Asked by DNVR Nuggets host Miroslav Cuk about the deal that sent Watson to the Cleveland Cavaliers in a sign-and-trade Wednesday, Jokic was characteristically measured.

“I’m happy for Peyton. He deserved it,” Jokic said in Serbian, as translated by Cuk. “We will miss his energy and skill. I don’t think about season yet — we have to play this — but it’s gonna be okay.”

That should quell some of the panic about Jokic’s contract status.

The Nuggets traded Watson to Cleveland for an unprotected 2031 Cavaliers first-round pick and a 2032 Kings second-rounder, shedding the $22 million annual salary Watson will earn on his new four-year, $88 million deal rather than absorbing a projected tax bill that ESPN’s Bobby Marks estimated could have reached $238 million in penalties. Watson was the player many called Denver’s top offseason priority in May. He was also the player the Nuggets priced out of every sign-and-trade suitor’s range before ultimately accepting a fraction of what they initially demanded.

Jokic saying he’s happy for Watson and that Denver will miss him tracks — it’s the honesty we’ve come to expect from Joker. He said this while wearing the Serbian national team jersey and preparing for FIBA World Cup qualifying windows against Iceland and Italy later this month.

But his comments land differently in the context of an offseason that has left the Nuggets fan base deeply uneasy about the franchise’s direction. Denver has now traded Watson and Michael Porter Jr. in consecutive summers — the two most exciting wings developed during the Jokic era. Denver Post columnist Troy Renck wrote Thursday that he would have “loved to see Nikola Jokic’s reaction to this move,” imagining Jokic saying, “So let me get this straight. We got no players. And the draft picks are available when I am 36 and 37 years old?”

Jokic’s actual reaction was gentler than that. Yet “it’s gonna be OK” is not “we’re going to be great.” It’s not “I trust the front office.” But he’s focused on what’s in front of him — a matchup with Victor Wembanyama, a qualifying window — while the team he’ll return to in October is lighter, thinner and most importantly cheaper than the one he left.

Jokic enters this season on the final year of his contract, turning down extensions this summer and last. By waiting until next summer, he can add more money and more beneficial mechanisms — like a no-trade clause — to his contract. He has said repeatedly that he will sign that deal. But until the document is inked, things will be uneasy in Denver as the vultures from other cities swoop in anytime there’s anything wrong with the Nuggets. And there is plenty wrong now — the roster around him has been systematically thinned by an ownership group that has made its bottom line a priority over winning.

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